Brynn stood frozen, hand still outstretched toward empty air. Thegarden pressed in around her. The beautiful garden he'd created while convincing himself he was only capable of destruction.
Slowly, she lowered her arm.
Her fingers were trembling.
He ran.
The anger came first. Easier than the hurt threatening to crack her chest open.
"Coward," she whispered to the empty garden.
The word echoed off the stone walls, swallowed by roses that bloomed backward.
She pressed her hands against her eyes, breathing through the tightness in her chest.
She'd let herself believe that maybe—maybe—she was different.
Stupid. She was so stupid.
The tears came without permission, furious and unwanted, and she hated herself for every single one. Hated that she'd let him close enough to hurt her. Hated that even now, standing alone with his rejection ringing in her ears, part of her understood why he'd run.
She wiped her face roughly, pulling herself together with the same grim determination that had gotten her through her parents' deaths, through years on the streets, through every betrayal and loss.
She was good at surviving.
This would be no different.
Brynn looked around the garden one last time. The roses. The fountain. The bench where he'd sat looking so lost before she'd arrived.
A place where even the Reaper could be something other than death.
And he'd fled it rather than let her touch him.
"Coward," she said again, but her voice broke on the word.
She wasn't sure if she was talking about him or herself.
XLII.
BRYNN
One week of this bullshit.
Seven days since Dante had fled his own garden like a startled cat, leaving her standing among black roses with her hand still reaching toward empty air. Seven days of meals sent to her room, polite excuses about "Lord Reaper's schedule," and pretending she wasn't checking every shadow for signs of him.
Brynn threw herself into the chair by her window, glaring out at the eternal twilight. Somewhere in this sprawling palace of bone and shadow, the most feared Death Lord in existence was hiding from her.
Hiding. From a mortal thief who barely came up to his shoulder.
The coward.
She'd marked every slight. Servants maintaining distance when delivering messages. Formal notes replacing conversation—Lord Reaper requests, Lord Reaper requires—as if they hadn't progressed past that months ago. The complete absence of shadows curling around doorframes when she passed through corridors.
He was everywhere and nowhere. His power hummed through every stone, wrapped around every ward-lock she touched, but the man himself had vanished like smoke.
And wasn't that just perfect. She'd finally started to think maybethere was something real between them. Then the moment things got complicated, the moment she'd seen past his control to the lonely man underneath, he'd run.
Should've known better. People with power always did this: they used you when it suited them, discarded you when things got messy. Her parents had trusted a partner who smiled and promised loyalty right up until he'd framed them for treason.
